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   Did he mean it?   Was that last night?   Was it for real?   He was just caught up in the moment with me.   That must be it.   He was toying with me again.

   Meghan sat up straight as she could on the edge of her bed.   Her arms rested in turn on the ones below, lowest elbows crooked in the notch of her hips; the six hands of these piled up randomly in her lap, one leg resting over the thigh on the other.   The mirror stared back at her, compressing herself between the borders of its frame.   The mattress bowed deeply in response to the load, forming a saddle around her buttocks.   It was physics, too much weight resting on to little surface area.   Motions and forces, acting and reacting, causes to an effect.   Last night she had worn the same outfit that had gotten her in trouble, the same teal lingerie she now had a purpose for.   A hope that went unfulfilled last night.   A knock or a lustful call, nothing was to come.

   Maybe I can find the quack and make him do to Grey what he did to my mom, then he would understand what it’s like.   Maybe if I bite him with my radioactive saliva...

   Another day, another chaos, and she was along for the ride.   She bristled at this, yet a week ago it would have been rage.   Fear, control, faith, resentment, hope, they swept her downstream, and instead of destroying herself fighting the current, she could only hope to guide herself away from the rocks and hope for smoother waters around the next bend.   Arms that bent steel, a will that made it happen; it could do nothing against the stream, or time.

   The feeling had been exhilarating last night, a young woman sneaking out of her parent’s house to get to first base with a boy, only it had ended abruptly, leaving her grasping for more.   After, Grey had acted like nothing had changed, climbing into his notch on the sofa, muttering that he had to be up early.   He was the one manipulating her now, using leverage with a well-practiced skill.   He had stolen her heart, and she was terrified to find what he would do with it.   He had been right about the heart after all.   She feared that her lies had been given up for a liar.

   Not willing to take off the lingerie, she covered herself in sweats, passing downstairs for a hearty breakfast only to find the doors to the bay had been propped open, and the florescent light reflecting off of its bare pale walls.   He had meant it, he was going to fix her van, and force her away from everything she possessed.   An urge came over her, a whisper told her to stop him, to force her desires on him, that he was hers alone.   It was only too easy to prove this to him.   It was a her long suppressed passion, the devil Id on her shoulder that carved its space in her when her dormant genes went active years ago.   Some days, many of them of late, it even seemed real, a taunting in her ear from a voice just out of sight.

   "Why are you doing this to me Gary?"   Her voice was agitated, exhausted.   She knew the answer, still, she had to say something, and he needed to answer for this.

   "You're going to need a new battery, new tires, the fluids need to be flushed out and lord knows what else.   It won't be cheap.   Also, some of Betty's relatives have made a home in the engine block."   Grey's reply was cheery, presumptuous to the outcome as he saw Meghan's face peeking into the bay around the arch of the doorway, the fingers of two hands poking around the door frame.   "Come in here, I'll show you."

   "No thanks."

   "Does being in here unnerve you as well?"

   "No...I just don't want to."

   "Then show me."

   "....Fine," she put on a brave face as she took an exaggerated stride inside, ducking under the doorway to stand proud for a moment before reality made its way into her eyes as they inventoried the van and Grey.   "What were you saying?"

   "The short version: your van needs a hot cash injection to bring it back to life."   His shirt had a line of grit and grime at its base, his hands were camouflaged with multiple colors of oils and grease.

   "Well tough, I've spent more than I wanted to this month as it is."   Her top arms were held down the others, containing them as her top-right hand clasped the top-left wrist.

   "It has been sitting for years.   I can't just flip the switch.   And that's just what I can determine right now.   You have any rags lying around by the way..."

   Meghan began to stride towards him.   "And why would I even want you to?"

   "But last night, we made a breakthrough."

   "And is that all?   Like we're going through aversion therapy?"   Her lower arms began to wiggle out from underneath the weight of the top pair, taking on a life of their own.   Her pace quickened as she neared him.

   "It was nice is all."   His eyes darted, looking for or avoiding something.

   "Is that all?"

   "Of course I care about you.   Do you have to ask?"

   "CARE?   YES!!"   A lower arm lashed out at him, twisting his wrist and throwing him to the ground.   Grey did not cry out in pain, or shout.   He remained as he had come to rest, some feet away to her side.

   "And where do you think we are?   And what has truly changed?"

   "What, wait!   I'm sorry, that's never happened before.   My arm did that...alone.   It wasn't my idea."   She held the offending arm with its partner and another to restrain it from lash out again, glaring at it as if it was a child in the cookie jar.

   "It will get worse too.   You've been surviving.   You now need to learn how to LIVE."

   "Let me help you up."   She offered, but her legs wouldn't move.   Now her own body was rebelling against her.

   "No.   I've always managed before now to pick myself up."

   "And you think you can get my van working again?   More skills you picked up on your travels?" her voice pitched high.   Even this and what it could portend was easier to deal with then what she had just done.   A couple of steps of space were given.   Her arm was released to fall loose past the hip her weight rested on.

   "Nope, 'Auto 1' in High school."   He righted himself slowly, gingerly from the rough fall, holding a good distance between the two of them, not that Meghan showed any intentions to the contrary. "This beast is almost as old as I am.   It better be simple fixes."

   "And what if it's not?"

   "Then we would either take it to a professional or we go nowhere."

   "I'm not ready to go anywhere," Meghan whispered under her breath.

   "I know a place up north, over a hundred private acres of woods in the mountains of Virginia.   It's near a ski resort.   It's a private lodge for skiing or whatever."

   "That's hundreds of miles from here!"   Meghan began to tense, to scratch and pull back her hair in reaction to this, the other taking the opportunity of release to fly in the air.

   "No one will know you were ever there."   Grey's own arms tried to respond to all of her gesturing, fingers pointing towards the north and the destination.

   "And you're going to drive?"

   "I have my license still," Grey nodded.

   "What about the registration?"

   "I'll take care of it.   You left it in the glove box."

   "I can't...I just can't.   I get it, but I just can't."   Meghan unconsciously was shielding her body haphazardly with her many arms over crossing familiar altered and torn silver sweats.   Grey tried to ignore her, returning to the work at half-speed as she watched without paying attention.   A thin, diluted stream of blood appeared in the corner of her mouth unnoticed, until she finally became aware of the pain throbbing from her lip from her chewing, released only to be bitten down again.   Her uncertainty so powerful she could not seem to even move anymore, her parts frozen like her van from neglect.   Parts unused for a decade expected to respond once more as everything moved on around her.   A feeling she had once thought to have exorcised from her soul.

   "Will you trust me?"   Gray asked after a time, all the while pretending not to notice her there, while growing somewhat impatient.

   "...yes."

   "Do this with me."

   "It's not happening."

   "Fine then, we'll try something else later."

   And the current flowed, and Meghan became detached as the watched the icons of her life flew by, the tools of her life, the focus of those tools, the things that maintained that life and the comfort within.   She passed by these things as she moved throughout.   She could not hold on to them, as they would slip through her many fingers, fragile to the point of translucency.   They could not hold her interests anymore, embellishments on the prison she had built for herself.   Grey stayed busy to the point of being overwhelmed, yet checked in with her in passing for another tool, or less, for small talk, or encouragement, always soft and passive.

   "Understand this if nothing else, I do not want to see you hurt."

   "I know."   Meghan had settled in on her books over the past several hours.   Currently, she had an old hardcover, resting it on her huge, calloused palm and fingers in such a way where Grey could see neither its cover nor contents.   "Listen to this:

   'O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!
   Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
   Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical,
   dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb!
   Despised substance of divinest show,
   just opposite to what thou justly seemest -
   A dammed saint, an honorable villain!'

   Have there ever been words more appropriate?"   She spoke with a passion, conveying a harmony of words without notes.

   "I do play the part, but so could you, at least to a point.   Let's hope for a better ending then those players."

   "You know the quote?"

   "No, but I can guess the play.   I want to do something for you...Actually, I already have.   Stay here."   In his excitement, Grey's legs had already started moving to the back of the warehouse before his body could catch up.   The new doors to the dock had already been braced and reinforced to the point of paranoia, where nothing short of a truck could ever slip through again.   One at a time, he removed the various contraptions, swinging the doors open wide to the bay.   Megan wanted to scream, she tried to protest, but nothing more than a gasp escaped her.

   "I wanted to break down these old doors for the scrap wood, but I think this is better.   Instead, I used some extra scrap to hold them upright right where you left them chained together.   You have you own little piece of the outdoors now, screened to the world.   It'll hold for a little while, as long as there isn't a storm."   He presented it like a showcase, the new doors swung open to touch edges with the old.   "There, a hundred square foot triangle of outdoors for you."

   "And no one can see in, guaranteed?"   Meghan had barely moved, only inching towards the moonlight pouring into her home.

   "Nothing is guaranteed, it's life.   But barring satellites with night vision, unlikely, or my incompetence, much more likely, we should be fine."

   She had only made it to the sofa, fascinated and apprehensive as she stared at the light of the moon pouring in uncensored.   She would not dare to look away, it was something dangerous, an invading predator crouched in her home, majestic.

   "It's freezing out here.   You might want to get something on your feet."

   "I don't care."

   "Watch out for splinters at least."

   Meghan had never used this door, the only passage to her home that seemed to be made for her.   She stopped at the precipice, sighed, took a second breath and held it before stepping over.

   "It's not so hard, you have to want something else more," Grey spoke softly.

   "Yeah..."   It had been a long time since Meghan had to crane her own neck to see anything.   She had a pinhole of the sky, thousands of stars to be distinguished from the heavens, or faded to be part of the glow of the Milky Way, and all hers now.   Soon, she had another new sensation, a stiff neck from the constant staring.

   "It becomes difficult to maintain a self when the heavens bare witness to how small you truly are."

   Meghan did not reply. Instead, she worked to lower herself onto the rough concrete of the dock at the apex of the triangle, knees popping as she squatted, falling to a rest with a laugh on her reinforced rear as her feet came out from underneath her.   She came to rest there on her back with her head resting on her four top forearms, a genuine smile on her lips as she watched the glimmering light above.   Her feet, the only things to remain inside of the warehouse, the broad flukes of an anchor in her old world

   "Get down here."   He would attempt to, but was not even allowed to zip up his military jacket as a buffer to the frigid concrete before her bottom-left arm tumbled him onto her.

   "I'll keep you warm."

   She cradled him close to her side with that arm.   Her bicep became an ample pillow as they watched the moon rise over the makeshift barrier, too soon disappearing behind the warehouse roof.

   "Let me fix you van," Grey pleaded at a whisper.

   "I'm sorry, I don't have the money."

   "So am I..."

   Meghan struggled to find sleep.   After a time spent in denial of its very existence, the crochet trim of her bed was pushed away along with the curtains covering her window, just far as she could with the tips of her fingers, which was still close to full, while still refusing to rise.   To one again touch the stars, not just an awareness, not a just a photo or a memory.   She was even twenty feet closer, just above where Grey had given them to her.   The woman who this morning was drowning now wanted to take flight, but there was only a narrow slit to be had now, and only a dozen glints to discern through a layer of dirt and grime, less than nothing.   Sleep only came in fits as leaden eyes would close only involuntary, then a bright light shorn the sky.   Meghan woke with a start, almost striking her forehead on one of the cross-beam above her bed.   Already it was morning.

   It took her the better part of an hour to leave her bedroom, emerging in what should have been a very wide sleeved and breezy sapphire blouse, but there was enough of it left to just touch a forest green skirt that in turn made it past mid-thigh.   It was one of her best outfits, and more tasteful than the last.   There had just been too many days since her last reminder to Grey.   It seemed her efforts would be foiled again even before they began.   Just outside her door lie a short note resting on top of Grey's backpack.   When either was placed there was beyond her.

   'I leave this with the promise that I'll return.   I have some work to do this morning, be back soon.’   She gave a sharp laugh as she shook her head.   This stray would be the death of her.

   Meghan stared at her marble heart held by cold iron hands, as she had off and on for hours this morning.   Instead of anxious, she was hopeful, anticipating.

   Why are the hands angry?

   She had been too busy looking at a single tree, when an entire forest had been around her to see, too consumed with a narrow perspective when nothing held contrary.   Something percolated up from within.

   Why are the hands so angry?

   It was the other perspective.   It meant empathy, it held inspiration.

   Meghan fell off of her stubby stool.   It kicked out from underneath her as she fell, splintering a leg as it was launched sideways a good fifteen feet.   It didn't hurt much, but it dusted up her skirt as she landed.   She was glad Grey wasn't here to see this after all, feeling distinctively unfeminine as she grunted, the wooden boards returning the sentiment as she pushed herself back to her feet, skirt now marked by train tracks of dust which she attempted to brush of with her left hands repeatedly.   Her eyes were still absorbed on her work.

What does the heart do?

Meghan walked to one of the southern windows that faced the low winter sun.   They were away from the machinery, and towards the town and its people, so she hardly ever strayed near them.   She dared to now, and found a word for what she had bubbling inside her that she had struggled to define, pride.

   *bzzzzzzzz*

   "Hello?"

   "It's Dave, open the pod bay doors Hal."

   "What?   Gary?"

   "Can you open the bay door please?"

   And as soon as Meghan did, she ran back upstairs, curious as if it was Christmas morning already.   Little could be made from any vantage point she enjoyed, just the plastic to be chrome grill of a car, and its deep yellow sides.   Is it a Taxi?   It pulled away down the gravel strip, and confirmed her fear.   Where did he get the money for a taxi?   Meghan tripped in her rush down the stairs, only to be saved a broken nose by three arms on the guardrail and two on the wall, still tweaking her ankle in the stumble.   "Oww, ow ow OW ow Ohh!"   It would take more than this to stop her, hopping down the remainder of stairs, only to jam the toes of her bent leg on each in turn.   The double doors of the bay were almost rocked off their hinges.   Only afterwards did she think to check if anyone else was actually inside.

   "Merry Christmas, my snuggle bear.   Well...almost, we still have nine days, but close enough."

   "Whu...where did you get all this stuff?"

   Grey was digging into a flat box for a head gasket, surrounded by more boxes of all shapes, containers, and tires, tools and other items she could not even identify, almost forming a child's makeshift fort between the two.

   "At the auto store.   Best of all, they had a manual for this beast."   He gave the van a quick pat on its front panel.

   "You don't have any money.   You were starving when you came here."

   "Don't worry about it."

   "DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT?!?   You were dying on my floor!   You could have been stabbed some filthy ally anywhere between there and here and you didn't have to?   You lied to me this whole time?   Or did you steal all of this stuff.   What am I going to do with you with you in jail?"   Her arms were flying again, worse than ever, the lower four gesticulating as if each had something to add in accent or dissent of his actions, until Meghan ran out of breath and took notice.   She sighed and shot a look that fixed the blame on Grey before focusing on the problem, forcing them back in compliance through sheer will.   He might need a fortress after all...

   "Believe me, they're paid for.   I only hope the cost won't be too high."

   "So you have money for this, all this...but not for food?"   She was still mentally wrestling her arms down, only the original two gestured at Grey's wall, from center to its edges in a sharp motion.

   "Only if you consider it mine.   I never had a reason to use it."

   "You would die, starve to death, before then?   Your life means so little?"

   "No, just some things matter more.   So what do you think getting this van moving again means to me?"

   "I wish you made sense."

   "Come away with me and I'll show you."

   Three days of labor, nearly forty hours of flushing fluids, replacing lines, tires, gaskets and brake pads and a hundred other little things checked and rechecked, forty hours of stops and starts with the sound and backtracking while the thick manual quickly degenerated into the 'well loved' category, dog-eared, stained with grime and coffee, and a spine creased in several sections of particular interest.   He loved the smells of rubber and oil with all the accompanying clatter, excited as he got every time he had something new to challenge him.   Meghan wanted to mock him, she wanted to help; she left him alone as her conflicted nature clashed and reclashed for dominance.   Finally on that third night he came out with the news.

   "Well, it's a girl...I think.   I still haven't tried starting her.   You have a rag? I could clean some of this grease off of my hands."

   "Sure."   Meghan thought about it for a moment before leaning over to reach behind the garbage can for one she threw behind there weeks ago.

   "You kept my shirt...after that display?"

   "I guess so..."

   "Wow."   They both eyed it together.   Grey was reluctant to use it, something that not long ago was one of a few precious things, but he finally did, compromising with himself to only a edge.    "Dinner smells good."   He turned over the former shirt in his hands.

   "It's just something I threw together, another stir fry."

   "It meant something to you, even when I was more than a nuisance?"

   "I had a week with a man on my sofa.   I kind of painted a canvas on you, several of them.   I guess...every girl, even the deformed, want a prince."   Her eyes fell to trace a concrete seam on the floor.

   "Well, then...to continue that analogy...I am lacking oats for the horses of our chariot...of all the things.   Also, I can't fix the saddle."

   "Huh?"

   "Where the driver sits."

   "You’re thinking about a carriage, those carry people, chariots are for fighting, neither have saddles though."

   "OK, I tried, I'm tired."

   "I appreciate that."

   "Look at me.   I don't think I ever had to romanticize.    Woo, manipulate, cajole, no problem if it wasn't my emotions on the line."

   "It's cute.   It makes you seem young.   You have an old soul for 25."

   "I was making adult decisions long before eighteen.   Speaking of which, I can fix the driver's seat, the one you wielded to the floorboard.   It's seems poetic really.   The final choice, your future, is in your hands..."